The Old Facebook Groups To New Groups Format Q&A & Tips

By now most of us OLD group owners have heard the news (even though Facebook hasn’t told it users or the media about it yet) that we are being migrated over to the NEW group format.

So I know lots of you have had questions because my email & Skype has been burning up. Well I will give you some answers I have found out and I even have some tips for everyone to make your life & this migration a little easier. The Facebook Help Center does little to help you.

Lets start with the 2 different messages everyone is getting if you are an old group owner or admin. The first one is one telling you that your group is scheduled to be archived.

You will not see an upgrade button on this & the reason being is it is not your turn yet. Facebook seems to trying to do a controlled upgrade on this so they do not disrupt the site too much with everyone upgrading all their groups at once. Just like they did with the Page Migration.

Now the next message is the one you get when they are ready for you to upgrade. The message is the same but only now it gives you the option Upgrade.

So you see this group has been given the option to upgrade. Now come the part you need to be careful with !!! Before you upgrade the page PLEASE make sure you back up all your discussion topics you want to save to MS Word or Wordpad because once you upgrade they become wall posts and will really clog your wall up if you have alot of topics. So just copy and paste anything you need to save & delete the topics before hand.

Now people are  asking, Well I backed up my discussion topics I wanted to save & I want to put them in the new group what do I do? This is where you need to make what is called a Create Doc, this is the new version of discussion topic. Then just copy and past what you need into that and the members will see there is a new Doc for them to read and it it will available to them on the right hand side.

Now another question that people are asking about upgrading is, Will all my members carry over to the new group?  The answer is YES they will and a really nice thing  also is that all those people you banned from your groups DO NOT COME OVER !!! So that will be one less headache !!! 

Speaking off Headaches here we go. Once again in typical Facebook fashion they have made it so we have to opt out of another thing and it is HUGE!!! Once the new group is made every member will get updates directly to their emails of all activity in the group. YEP YOU HEARD ME RIGHT !!! Each member has to go in to manually shut off the email feature or they will get an email every time some one posts on the wall. To shut it off is easy, just look at the top right side of group and you will see an edit settings button, click it and a new box will open up and then uncheck the email notifications and I also shut off the chat messages so if you have chatty people in the group who use Facebook Chat you wont have a chat box constantly popping up. It is a simple thing to do if you know about it and now you do.

Now here is a REALLY BIG TIP !!! If you are a member of alot of groups you are going to have to do this for every group. But wait Facebook has done something good to make it so you dont have to visit everyone and shut them of one by one. You can do this. Go to Account, account settings, go to the 3rd tab Notifications and click that. This is where you can shut off all those annoying emails you get from Facebook. Now go to groups and you will see a blue link to shut off all email notifications, click that and a new box will pop up and now you can just go down the list and uncheck every group then click save settings. Only problem with this is that you will have to constantly keep up on this every time a new group migrates over to the new format for the next few months. Sorry !!! 

Also people ask, Can I still send out messages from the new groups?  Yes but only if you have a group that has less than 250 members according to Mark Zuckerberg himself. Once you go over that it doesn’t work very well and sometimes not at all. But you have to set up a group email because as you know Facebook is converting all the old inboxes into his new message system.

To set up a group email just go to edit group, them you will see a button that asks you to set up and email.Just click it and set up your group email, you do get to chose what you want it to be. Then when you want to send a message out just go to you inbox and send out a message as usual only copy and paste the email address into the spot where it say who you want to send it. NOTE !!! From what I am hearing this will only work if you have the new email message system. I haven’t confirmed this yet as I have the new system and have had it for many months now. So I will keep you informed on this one but I have been able to send out messages with the new system.

People are also asking can I still control my group and the members that get in? YES !!! You can make it open, closed or secret plus Facebook has also recently added a new option available to the admins. Whereas even though anyone can try to add someone into the new groups you can now set it up so only an admin can approve entry into a new group. Even if the group is open to the public. Very Nice !!! 

You can go here for more info on the new groups But it doesnt really tell you much. Just click on the picture. 

Now alot of Mafia Wars Families have been asking should I convert my War Page over to the new format. Absolutely Not In My Opinion !!! Unless you want the ability to still be able to shut down your war page so your attackers cant find you. I would suggest you make a Page instead. Facebook has a new page available for things like this called Community Pages. You still have the ability to ban and un-ban people and you can send out messages from them even if you go over 5000 members. Plus no headaches of people having to shut off emails as most war pages are very active.

I know this is alot of info but Facebook isn’t telling you anything and I want you all to know what is going on. I will be going over this more in more detail on Our Show Monday Night at 6PM EST. Just watch our Fan page to get the link to the show. Also if you have questions feel free to ask them on our wall or you can wait & call in or type them in our shows chat room on Mondays LIVE show and we can answer it then.